An outdoor theatre group was in town for a week and one of their props was this old trailer. I remember these when I was a kid, long before people started driving Winnebagos the size of a barn down our highways.
It’s not the most beautiful trailer, and I didn’t create a particularly beautiful sketch of it, but memories are contained within and I hope the sketch conjours a few of your own.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (8×5), Platinum 3776
I live on a part of the Earth where you can go into forests and find wild ferns hanging out as part of the forest understory. So much so, in fact, that fern leaves, before they’ve unrolled, are collected and sold as Fiddlehead greens in our grocery stores during late spring. This is novel to a guy who grew up in Arizona.
Of course you can also find them kept in captivity, kept by those with greener thumbs than mine. There were a bunch of them in the same place as the Chinese statues I talked about in my last blog post and I drew one of them as they live in really nice clay pots. I should have posted the sketch with the statue sketch but I forgot all about it. I post it here to make up for that omission.
Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
When they were building it, some of the cynics referred to the grandiose building that was to be Ste-Foy City Hall as the “Taj Mahal.” It really was on an over-the-top building just to house the mayor and his court. And the irony is that it wasn’t too many years later that all the smaller municipalities were merged with Quebec City and city governance moved, principally into the Quebec City Hall.
I’m not sure what the function of the building is these days but one thing it does is to keep the rain off a couple of beautiful Chinese statues. It’s just as unclear why these statues exist in Quebec City but our group took advantage of them to do some sketching during yet another rainy day. It was a fun days and I hope you like my result.
Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
We can’t catch a break with the weather it seems but Yvan and I sat under an awning in open-air atrium at the museum and sketched very large potted plants. This area becomes a restaurant when weather permits and these huge pots will be moved around to decorate the area. I was struck by the fact that while these huge planters were very similar to one another, none of them were exactly alike.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (8×5), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
Well, the last time I was on the Plains of Abraham (in Jardin Jeanne d’Arc) I froze because I dressed for summer and Mother Nature was still thinking early spring. So, I returned on Friday, in long pants and wearing a jacket. And I’m glad I did because it was very pleasant to sit in a grassy area and draw this scene.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (5×8), Platinum 3776
The structure is an interesting one. It is a military observation/gun emplacement built by the British to defend against a potential attack from the United States. What’s interesting about it is that you’re looking at the “thin” side of the building. The walls on this side are typical stone while on the side facing south the walls are very thick to withstand cannon fire, and maybe even a Trump speech (grin).